New amendment rules on intermediary guidelines amount to censorship

Source: The post is based on the following articles

“Intermediary oversight should never be opaque” published in the Livemint on 10th April 2023.

“New amendment rules on intermediary guidelines amount to censorship” published in The Hindu on 10th April 2023

Syllabus: GS – 3: role of media and social networking sites in internal security challenges.

Relevance: About amendments to IT Rules.

News: The government recently notified amendments to Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules.

About the amendments to IT Rules

What are the concerns associated with amendments to IT Rules?

Lack of clarity: There is a lack of clarity on how the fact-checker would be governed and allow redressal of faulty calls. If ‘misleading’ posts are banned, then the wide scope for interpretation of the term “misleading” would make it easy for a fact-checker to abuse its authority.

Further, in ‘the Information Age’, it is challenging to set the truth apart from falsehood.

Forgets Arm’s length of government and media: In India, freedom of the press is guaranteed through Article 19 of the Constitution, with media rights and public right to free speech derived from this Article. This means any relationship between the government and the media should be one kept at arm’s length, with the media having sufficient freedom. But these amendments will impact the freedom of the press.

Create chilling effect: By threatening to remove a platform’s immunity for content that is flagged by a government unit, it is clear that the Union government intends to create a “chilling effect” on the right to speech and expression on online platforms.

What should be done?

-All rule-making and rule enforcers must outlive changes in every domain. To ensure that, the fact-checking body should be kept transparent and open to scrutiny.

-Autonomy for the fact-checker would be an essential condition to address the conflict of interest between the Centre and the media firms. Else, it will act as a another arm of government’s regulatory system.

-The rule’s basic validity needs to be tested by the judiciary in the light of our right to free speech. The Constitution must prevail.